Competition is at the heart of any business. It is the heart check of a company, proving if the team is up to the task at hand or if there is someone else that can satisfy the market better than them. This is the main reason behind our classes having group projects in which they are pitted against each other, and no other competition here at Schiller Madrid is as intense as Professor Jose Pinto’s Gladiator Games.

During this years Annual Gladiator Games, the Cross-cultural Communication class was divided into different teams, in which each had to present an expansion proposal for the location of the next SIU campus.

The teams analyzed different countries, including Argentina, India, and Switzerland, their infrastructure, higher education system, university life, and their position regarding an international setting. Once this was completed, they found a city where the campus would have the best environment to provide opportunities for students around the globe to build their international career.

Every city had its strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes the political situation was not the most stable for investors to believe in an international campus, while in other cases it was the country’s intricate law system that required a partnership with a local firm. Nonetheless, every campus offered future students the opportunity to continue building their careers upon the same premise we have built our university, “To prepare students, personally and professionally, for future leadership roles in an international setting.”

In the end, there could only be one winner, so congratulations to Team Switzerland for presenting a convincing proposal to our President, Dr. Manuel Alonso Puig, and Campus Director, Isabel Campbell. Stay tuned for the Gladiator Games of 2019!

It’s not everyday that you meet someone as renowned as John de Zulueta, current chairman of Círculo de Empresarios. It is difficult to find someone with this much experience in both the US and Spain. After completing his degree, De Zulueta started working for the Boston Consulting Group, which in his own words, “gave him the opportunity to create the strategic thinking that served him well throughout his career.”

During the event, De Zulueta shared his experience working around the globe and gave all the students the initiative to improve their careers by outsmarting the market. The ones that survive are not those who are the strongest, but those who can adapt. Therefore, we must continually seek to improve our understanding of the environment and adapt our skill set to what is needed now.

During his speech, De Zulueta encouraged our students to discover more about artificial intelligence, digital marketing and Blockchain, while adapting to the new work environments in which there is more teamwork and less hierarchy. This can be seen not only demonstrated in the work ethic, but has already been translated to the physical office, where we see more and more examples of open offices.

However, it is not only about students adapting to this new type of work environment, as De Zulueta said, “Nowadays, the youth that is entering the workforce focuses more on welfare and business benefits, rather than typical salary increases. This forces companies to think about new business compensations outside of common practices.”

We are so thankful to John de Zulueta for coming to our campus and sharing the morning with our students. It is by bringing experienced professionals such as he, that students get to discover the opportunities outside the walls of our university.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

History is not only a course you study, it is the road walked by those before us. It gives us the opportunity to learn from their lives and evolve from what we once were.

One of the great lessons of history is World War II and the horrors it caused in Europe and all over the globe. The biggest example of this is Auswitchz, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp and the most lethal of all.

Our students had the chance to visit theAuschwitz exhibition held here in Madrid, where they could see history without traveling hundreds of miles to where it happened. They could find find small personal belongings from some of the victims, structural elements of the camp, documents and unpublished audio-visual materials that documented what happened.

It may seem as a distraction for students of business or hospitality to visit such a place, but in reality in enriches their understanding of what happened during previous generations. It serves as a universal warning of the dangers that stem from hatred, intolerance, and antisemitism, and make us see human cruelty at its uttermost. It is only by remembering that we never forget and therefore are capable of stopping it from ever happening again.

Because, in the end, as the Philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The main goal here at Schiller International University is to develop students that will thrive in the real world far beyond university; people that, even before graduating, are ready to engage in todays business world.

In order to make that happen, we reinforce the student’s perspective of the world outside of these university walls by creating opportunities for them to visit and face the day to day operations of companies that are driving their sectors economic boom.

SIU Madrid’s Graduate Advisor, Edgar Barroso, took action based on this vision and organized the annual visit to Inditex headquarters in Coruña. Students had the opportunity to visit the clothing design department and understand the complexity of the logistics behind the company. As the students themselves remarked, the departments run as smoothly as a Swiss Watch, judging by the level of precision and attention with which they arrange every single store and window dressing.

The highlight of the visit according to most of our students was the company’s approach to data analysis. Inditex’s data management system allows the company to know the most viewed articles worldwide in real time, ensuring that the supply and demand of the products are well adjusted. Also, as some of the students remarked, this experience has helped them in their career decision-making process, some of them even engaging in an opportunity to work in the textile sector after graduation.

This experience is not only valuable to the students as a career opportunity, but also gives them the chance to develop their views on the future workplace they want to create. The environment you are a part of when you start in a company plays an important role, from employee morale to the purpose that drives them. We must never forget it is people we are working with and a good social experience boosts any organizations results, as a student explained.

Every student enjoyed the opportunity to discover more about the work environment at Inditex, highlighting that when visiting the company’s museum they discovered the origin of the multinational enterprise it has now become, inspiring many to passionately believe in their own entrepreneurial dreams.

How many of us have lived in a city for a long time, but never had the opportunity to discover everything that the city has to offer. That is exactly why Madrid Inside and Out exists, to give every student the opportunity to know this city, regardless if they just arrived or if they were born here.

The students had the opportunity to walk around Madrid exploring its history, identifying each location with the lives that gave them their own distinctive flair. It is now that every student can walk around not only sensing the vibe that the city has, but understanding the reason behind it, the meaning of each location and the traditions that surround the capital of the country they now live in.

The visit involved a walk around Madrid’s most and least iconic locations, the oldest library, the ancient walls, and the Madrid of the Austrians. The city is filled with an atmosphere of life that you can feel from the very moment you step foot in its streets. From the diversity of the center to the most “madrileño,” everyone discovered that this city has a lot more to offer than what they expected.

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